


The Little Things That Change You

by Anticipatio



Series: He's My Collar [10]
Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Blue is a moron, Cultural Differences, Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Self-Reflection, Teenage Rebellion, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16208006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anticipatio/pseuds/Anticipatio
Summary: A collection of short stories exploring the inextricable link between Blue and Zero.





	1. Tyndall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some little quirks of human biology that fascinate Zero, and he didn't even know about them until he met the brat.

Zero noticed the pattern several weeks after he was first hired by Blue.

They didn’t talk much, then, mostly short commands, clarifying questions, and the occasional answer, if Zero was lucky. 

(Did the kid think he was a mind reader?) 

(Dumb question. Most people thought that.)

But one of the first _casual_ observations Zero made of Blue, as in not involving his revolving door schedule, or unfathomable disregard for his own wellbeing, or anything else his guard would need to keep him safe, was the sneezing.

It was consistent. Almost every time they went outdoors when there was a bright sky. Blue would take a few steps, pause, and then sneeze once or twice without any discernable cause. He didn’t even seem particularly sniffly or snotty like he was sick.

Finally, a few days after Zero first became aware of the consistent reaction, his burning curiosity finally outweighed his professionalism.

Adnau sneezed.

“Why do you do that?”

“Huh?” Adnau sniffled, squinting in the bright Mandalorian sun.

“That—The sneezing,” Zero clarified, gesturing upward, “When we go outside.”

There was a moment of silence, Adnau blinking in the light until he acclimated. His brow furrowed, scanning Zero’s military helmet like he was trying to discern any sort of expression. He whispered, barely audible enough for Zero to catch, “‘M gonna have to change that.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Adnau said, eyes quickly darting over the rest of Zero, analyzing his posture, before brushing past in a relaxed stroll. “Why does it matter?”

Zero raised a brow behind his impassive façade. “It doesn’t,” he replied, letting a touch of impatience seep into his tone. He found that intimidation was one of the few ways to get his ward to cooperate, but even that was quickly changing. Adnau snorted. “But you always do it when we go outside, and it’s weird. I’ve worked with humans and none of them have done that.”

Predictably, but no less frustrating, Adnau was silent. He needed a _guard,_ not a _friend,_ he repeatedly insisted. Anything Zero said that could be deemed as friendly in any manner was studiously ignored.

(Five years later, Zero felt a pang of sadness, thinking about the blank, uninterested face Blue forced himself to have. Even after his parents raised their voices loud enough for Zero to clearly hear down the hall. He wasn’t always great at it, red puffiness around his eyes betraying how he really felt. 

They stopped, years later, when Zero threatened to disembowel them moments after Blue showed them damning financial documents with a sneering, demeaning grin.)

“‘Because if you’re, like, allergic to something, then maybe we shouldn’t be going out so much—”

“Ugh,” Adnau grumbled, “No, absolutely not.” (The farther he could get from his family, the better.) He rolled his eyes and looked at Zero over his shoulder, “It’s just the sun. I can’t do anything about it.”

Zero glanced up to the clear sky and back down to Adnau. “You’re allergic to the sun?”

He genuinely wasn’t trying to make Adnau mad, but the kid’s hot temper made it difficult to get a clear answer out of him. Teenagers. “No!” he snapped, a rare frown crossing his face. It disappeared quickly with a deep breath, “I’m just sensitive to light ‘cause my eyes are light colored, and also genetics, or something.”

It was weird to hear him talk like a teenager, inarticulate and vague, instead of a politician, but it was far less weird than a _teenager_ talking like a _politician._ “Weird,” Zero said, absently.

Beside the outburst, Adnau must have been in a good mood that day, quipping, “Says the guy covered head to toe in pockets.”

“Jealous, much? I could store some tissues in one for you, Sniffles.” Zero caught himself before he could playfully bump his shoulder into Adnau’s as they walked. Professionalism, blah, blah, but also, Adnau was a twig that looked like he could blow away in the slightest breeze, and Zero would no doubt knock him flat on his ass with any amount of horseplay.

“Y’know, I can probably see better in the dark than most people,” Adnau mused, fixing Zero with a mighty cocky side-eye.

Zero barked out a laugh, making Adnau frown indignantly. “Please tell that to your bio tutor, I wanna see what they say.”

“They’ll say I’m right!” Adnau haughtily crossed his arms. “They’ll probably say I can see better in the dark than _you,_ I bet!”

He was barely passing bio, and Zero was starting to think that it was a pity pass. “Oh yeah?” he slid in front of Adnau, deftly walking backwards, and ducked his head to roughly eye-level. “What’s your tapetum like?”

“My what?”

“Your tapetum, y’know, to see in the dark. What color eye shine should I be lookin’ for if I go hunting you down? You gotta be nocturnal like me if your night vision’s as good as you say.”

“You’re nocturnal?” Adnau puzzled, “How has this never come up?”

“Circadian rhythm’s all kriffed up with mods, gimmie about a week after disabling some and I’ll be back to eating dark lunch at two in the morning.”

“So maybe not better than _you_ specifically…” Adnau conceded, trailing off. They stopped in front of a caf shop, and he eyed it longingly. Jam-packed full of workers from the rebuilding efforts, but that never dissuaded Adnau. 

Zero tsked, “You’re gonna get addicted to the stuff. If you aren’t already.”

“Nonsense, a cup or so a day can’t possibly hurt.”

(One cup a day turned into about a dozen, minimum, and if Blue remembered what he said at the tender, innocent age of fifteen, he didn’t acknowledge it, even when Zero tried to remind him after every three-day-long bender.)

They went in, of course. As Adnau rattled off his order, Zero stuffed a handful of napkins into his tactical vest and waited.

When he sneezed upon their exit, cup of caf halfway to his mouth, Zero offered Adnau a proffered napkin with a flourish. It was slapped out of his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dad has super, SUPER clear blue eyes and sneezes nearly every time he goes outside. I do too sometimes, but not nearly as often as he does, and I have brown eyes. It's a weird reflex that some people have that just seems to fucking BAFFLE science. I cannot find a clear answer as to why it happens, or why it's apparently more common in blue-eyed people other than it has some genetic component (sometimes!) and has some connection to the light pigmentation of people with light colored eyes (maybe!).
> 
> I really just want to give Blue more and more traits that Zero can use to bully him tbh.
> 
> More importantly: I'm sad to see the Star Wars arc of Campaign go, but I wish Kat the very best in her future endeavors with her own podcast and apparently enabling Jim's obsession with creating new tabletop games. I'm also really excited for the new arc! The preview episode was SO GOOD and I absolutely will probably contribute to the fandom with those characters as well.


	2. 0:00:00, 0BBY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue sleeps through the beginning of the Empire's demise.

Blue hadn’t even gotten to his first cup of caf of the day when news of Yavin got to him.

Blue carefully extracted himself from bed, having to maneuver out of Zero’s possessive hold and, per usual, replace his spot with a large pillow. He yawned and looked out the window at the alien sky with its alien sunrise and its spotty alien clouds.

It was probably going to be nice and cool for once.

His mood was quickly soured by his bad knee bumping into the doorway in his stumble to the kitchen. A deep, grinding ache bloomed as he rubbed it irritably. Getting ready in the morning without his caf was always a struggle, and he wondered why he even bothered with a regular sleep schedule when he could instead be laying in bed with his significant other and sleeping until the brightness leaking through their blinds woke them up.

Zero snorted and rumbled. With grated nerves, Blue was reminded that if he didn’t get caf in his system by this time in the morning, he’d be smothering Zero to stop the sounds he made in his sleep. 

He hobbled into the kitchen to make himself a cup when a series of pings went off on his datapad, sitting abandoned on the counter. At first, he thought there was a glitch. He jury-rigged a closed network to maintain communications with some of his more valuable contacts using stolen machinery days before he defected with Zero. It was a bitch to maintain, always on the verge of shorting, but at least there was an abundance of electronic parts for him to repair his equipment with.

It was an eyesore, but the neighbors seemed glad to have somewhere to dump their kids’ mods once he configured them into their newly installed adult models.

But, no, it was indeed pinging out of control. There were dozens of messages, from Aava, from Zara, from Lyntel, from the other dipshits on the Mynock… He scanned over the logs, immediately frozen in place with his caf losing heat in his hand. He read, and read, heart pounding, until he reached the most recent message. 

**lyntel** : it’s gone, the murder ball is kriffing gone  
> **Blue** is no longer away.  
**Blue** : Any survivors?  
**Aava** : A few TIEs might have gotten away, unsure as to the identity of the pilots.  
**Aava** : But to answer your _real_ question: Tarkin was most definitely still inside. He’s dead.

The crazy son of a bitch was dead.

 **~*~princesszara~*~** : LADS  
**~*~princesszara~*~** : WJEREVER YOU ARE TAKE A SHOT  
**leenik geelo of the mynock** : DTF DTF DTF

Yeah, Blue could drink to that.

(No one wanted to tell them what that meant. They got close to figuring it out once when Zero made a joke about how he was ‘dtf w/ blue 2nite lol’. That was, until Leenik offered to smuggle some of Bacta’s lesai to Blue if he was going to spend his nights destroying the fascists.

Zero _insisted_ to him that he should try the lesai if that meant he would be ‘dee-tee-eff’ all night. Blue sliced his optics to make him see with a fisheye filter for the rest of the day.)

He grabbed a bottle from a packed cabinet and heavily spiked his cold caf until it threatened to spill over the lip of the mug. His liver was probably going to give out at any moment with the sad excuse for a cocktail, but that was going to be the last thing on Blue’s mind for a while.

Dazed, still reeling, he somehow found himself back in the bedroom with a drained mug and the sudden clarity of caffeine and slow burn of alcohol shaking him from the numbness of revelation. 

“Oh my god,” he gasped quietly. “Oh my god, _Zero!_ ” he said, louder, jumping back into bed and shaking Zero ineffectively.

“Zero! Oni! Oni Oni Oni Oni Oni—!”

“Y’know,” Zero grumbled, sleep-slurred with his organic eye opened a sliver to glare at Blue, “Usually when someone does this, they’re about to tell their partner that they’re pregnant, so unless you’ve defied the laws of nature—”

“DS-1 fell.”

“What?” Zero scrambled to sit up, grabbing Blue by the shoulders and looking at him in awe, “It’s…?”

Blue kissed him, cupping his jaw and straddling his lap. All of the tension he carried in his body for years melted away as he molded against Zero. A broad hand came up to cradle his head and comb through his hair, gently pulling him away, “Have you been _drinking?_ ”

“Only a cup! Oni, it’s _gone_ and so many of the key government officials are probably _dead._ ” Blue felt a welling in his chest, threatening to burst. That might have been the caf mixed with the cheap alcohol putting him in the first stages of heart failure instead of his emotions, though. “The Empire can’t recover from this. It’s _collapsing._ ”

He knew that things couldn’t go back to normal. He’d never be on the Bluebird with his friends and the luxury of deluxe caf. Years of abuse have probably rendered his knee unsalvageable without cybernetic replacements and painful, debilitating surgeries. Synox would put a blaster shot between his eyes in a heartbeat, and his estate was probably confiscated and drained by now, but…

Zero gave him a wobbly smile, “Let’s go see Aava.” Blue nodded emphatically and buried his face in Zero’s shoulder. “When things settle down, let’s go see her. And after that, we can go to a nice beach planet together, somewhere out of the way. We can go somewhere with a nice restaurant and see a holo.”

Blue closed his eyes and imagined what it’d be like to travel freely again, to see the stars from every viewport and feel the quake of a ship on takeoff. To have Zero piloting again.

“Adnau,” Zero murmured, “We could go to Mandalore.” Blue shivered and Zero continued, “We can get you uj cake—”

“ _Uj’alayi._ ”

“—and some decent tihaar and all the clothes you want and…” Blue could feel the embarrassment radiating from Zero in that moment, and his own cheeks flushed. “If the laws are still pretty liberal—”

“Yes. To everything,” Blue whispered. The stubborn threads of ambition were tugging in his brain, but the absolute, all-encompassing _need_ to move around and see the galaxy with the love of his life quickly overtook those thoughts.

Someone rapped at the front door. They both startled, looking to one another before Blue cursed under his breath. He scrabbled off of Zero and threw the wardrobe open to find something that looked mildly presentable in the disorganized disaster.

ᴍʀ. ʙʟᴜᴇ? a little input echoed in his head, ᴀʀᴇ yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ?

“I’ll be there in a second!” he yelled aloud. Blue never really got the hang of the implant, at least not as an output. It seemed intuitive, but something about his physiology must not have clicked the same way that it did with others.

He was, after all, not a gank.

Zero was starting to look bleary again, blinking slowly as he watched Blue’s clambering. He grunted and collapsed back into a heap as Blue rushed out of the doorway, the lazy bastard. Blue tried to think about what menial labor he could order Zero to do later in the day.

He hoped the smell of alcohol on his breath wasn’t noticeable and that he was, as he imagined himself, walking and talking steadily. With a deep breath, he opened the front door just a sliver to peer at whoever disturbed them.

It was a kid, that much he could tell. Without anything but their awkward stance and gangly stature, Blue couldn’t pin an age on the individual. Their helmet shot up to look at him, and he immediately noticed the persistent tilt to their head. “Tinnitus?”

Y-yᴇᴀʜ.

“Inner ear, then. C’mon.”

He left the door wide open, long since abandoning caution. At first, he didn’t even let anyone in without a damn good reason, but he was certain at this point that the community would slaughter anyone that even came close to harming him. Apparently, good slicers that didn’t ask for a (literal) arm or a (literal) leg were hard to come by since business was more lucrative on Nar Shaddaa.

Blue motioned for the teen to sit at the dining table, where a jumble of cables and adapters lay in a tangle. “The newer model, right?”

They sat up straight and grunted, a sound that Blue was pretty sure either indicated surprise or the beginnings of a bloodthirsty, drunken rage. In this context, he bet on the former. ʜᴏᴡ ᴅɪᴅ yᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ?

“It’s been happening with a lot of people,” he said. A ping came from his datapad, and he had to resist the urge to lunge across the counter to pore over the hot goss. “I already have a patch, hold still.”

He was going through the motions of installing the fix automatically, and even his mouth seemed to be working without much conscious input to check on the kid during the process. His mind, on the other hand, wandered to the implications of a fallen empire.

No one here on the (real) gank homeworld would care either way, as separated as they were from the larger galaxy. Those with family and friends on Nar Shaddaa would hear about it soon enough, and then they would go on to talk about Tubaik’s impressive kill count or whatever other menial thing came to mind. It was jarring, being so far from the Empire’s reach that their fall didn’t even bat an eye.

Another ping from the kitchen, followed by a confirmation message on the pad he ran diagnostics on. His guest righted their head and shook away the residual vertigo. Blue could hear the relieved smile in their drawn-out sigh while he pulled the cable from their neck. ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ yᴏᴜ, he heard, ʜᴏᴡ ᴍᴜᴄʜ?

More damnable pinging. “Eh, don’t worry about it,” he waved off, suppressing the vibrating excitement that made his hands shake as he pulled the door back open.

That seemed to surprise the gank. ᴀʀᴇ yᴏᴜ ꜱᴜʀᴇ?

He was feeling generous, with the weight of the world finally lifting from his shoulders and the fear that itched the back of his mind with each passing day finally subsiding. “It’s an easy fix,” he lied, thinking back to the sleepless nights he spent trying to find a workaround for the problem, “Just don’t tell anyone.” He still had to eat, and giving out code for free wouldn’t feed him.

ᴏꜰ ᴄᴏᴜʀꜱᴇ! Even in his head, they sounded beyond happy. ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ yᴏᴜ ꜱᴏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ, ᴍʀ. ʙʟᴜᴇ.

As soon as the door closed, he nearly ate shit as his leg gave out in the mad dash towards his communications pad.

“Calm down,” Zero chuckled from the doorway to the bedroom, “They’re just talking about the bet they made.”

The childish bet Blue refused to participate in. Even as a criminal at large, he had standards. He exhaled all the excited tension winding him up as Zero came up behind him and let his weight sink into the embrace. “I’ve been thinking of ways to non-sexually punch Valentine in the face,” Blue murmured. 

“Oh?”

“If I can hit him in a way where his teeth cut his cheek, that probably sucks.” He could feel the purr forming in Zero’s chest on his back, interrupted by a snort. “Do you think he’d like _that?_ ”

Zero considered this for a moment, burying his nose in Blue’s hair. “I think you’re onto something,” he conceded, “But you might wanna check with Aav’.”

“Ugh, gross.”

“Hey, you wanna know.”

Blue hummed, subconsciously lowering his pitch to match the rumbling against him. Zero took a deep breath and whispered, “I’m serious. About Mandalore.”

“I know,” Blue said, feeling the hints of blush spread to his ears, embarrassed and giddy. “It’d be a pretty cool comeback. Fly back in after dropping off the face of the planet for twelve or whatever years, eat cake, immediately get married to a nonhuman—"

“Wow, marriage? I was talking about having sex in public,” Zero teased, holding tighter to keep Blue from squirming out of his grasp. Smart, since Blue was immediately inclined to smack him.

“There were never any laws specifically on exhibitionism.”

“Which means it’s not _il_ legal.”

Blue wriggled and pushed at the arms wrapped tightly around his middle, jeering, “I could just go back and marry that girl my parents almost betrothed me to.”

Zero laughed out loud at that. “You’ve got my blessings, dude. I’d _pay_ to see you try to act straight.”

Blue elbowed Zero in the stomach at a spot _just_ tender enough that the sharp jab made him huff and loosen his grip. The freedom was only momentary, giving Blue enough time to spin around before his hands were seized centimeters from pushing Zero’s chest. 

The thing about exile was that it gave Blue more motivation to _actually_ pay attention to Zero’s instruction when they found spare moments to train. Zero still had at least a hundred pounds of muscle on him, but Blue was quick enough to get around that barrier. For example, getting Zero to release his wrists by headbutting him in the sternum to knock the wind out of him.

Blue smirked and managed a playful slap against Zero’s chest before he was pulled flush with his arms gathered behind his back in one hand with a few deft motions. “You done?” Zero growled. Blue shivered and grinned brightly up at him, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ha—” Zero deadpanned, taking a step forward to push Blue against the countertop, “Ha. You’re a riot, pipsqueak.” He used his free hand to hoist Blue onto the surface effortlessly, never once releasing his solid grip. “As fun as this is, I know you got, like, six people comin’ in before noon,” Zero said, nosing Blue’s collar aside to nip softly at his shoulder, sounding very unconvinced by himself.

Blue craned his neck and breathed, “I think that I have time for a kiss before work, at least.”

Zero brought their lips together, slow and warm in the crisp morning air. As if on cue, there was a knock at the door and another ping on his datapad, but Blue let himself ignore them for a moment. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel rushed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! I wanted to write a happy ending! I wanted my evil kids to live and to fight against the Empire in their own ways. I wanted Blue to grow the **fuck** up and learn to appreciate Zero and the rest of his friends. What better way to get a new appreciation for life than to lose just about everything you had?
> 
> I had a long rambling thing here about headcanons as I am wont to do, but for now I think it’ll be more fun to leave things ambiguous. For NaNoWriMo, I _miiiight_ try to turn this into a proper story on its own, detailing the time between this and the end of canon. We’ll see!


End file.
